36 Hours in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Belo Horizonte, the lively industrial capital of Brazil’s second most populous state, Minas Gerais, has always attracted hordes of visitors—the kind who carry briefcases and laptops, that is. But more and more leisure travelers have been stopping by on their way to one of the art world’s most seductive new attractions, the Instituto Inhotim, a fantasy landscape of world-class contemporary art 35 miles outside of town. Soccer fans aren’t far behind, with the World Cup coming to town in June: Six matches will be held in the city’s overhauled stadium, the Mineirão. Both categories of visitors may be surprised at what else they find: a set of brand-new museums housed in neo-Classical-style palaces that until 2010 housed state government agencies; an almost overwhelming number of night-life options; and new and old takes on the state’s soul-comforting cuisine. So what if the hotels still lean toward business over boutique?

Friday
3 pm
World Cup Sparkle
Around $300 million was what it took to turn Belo Horizonte’s 1965 soccer stadium, the Minas Arena, into a slick 21st-century beauty that will host Argentina and Iran in opening-round games and a semifinal match that could very well feature the Brazilian national team. If you can’t catch a game at the Mineirão, the English-language tour (8 reais, or $3.70 at 2.20 reais to the dollar) will take you through the locker rooms, warm-up areas and under the translucent roof. (Since you’re already in the neighborhood, follow up with a peek at some of the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer’s early works around the Pampulha lagoon, including the playfully undulating São Francisco de Assis church.)

8 pm
Homey Elegance
In the fashionably bohemian Santa Tereza district, dine at Birosca S2. Its vibe is informal - the bartender might become the piano player; the hostess could end up eating at the bar next to you - and is meant to evoke the feeling of a “casa da vó” (Grandma’s house), and the furniture follows suit. But the metaphor stalls unless you imagine that Grandma went to a fancy cooking school where she learned to make seasonal dishes like an elegant lamb shank accompanied with an artful smear of sauce made from the jabuticaba fruit, as fun to pronounce as it is to eat (ja-boo-chee-CAH-bah). One homey dish on the menu during a recent visit—bruschetta made with canned beef, dressed up with a drizzle of olive oil and barbecue sauce made from the tangy biquinho pepper—is not commonly found on restaurant menus. Dinner for two without drinks is about 120 reais.

10 pm
Bars, not Beaches
Belo Horizonte is an inland capital, a fact often used to justify its drinking habits. “There’s no sea, let’s go to the bar” (it rhymes in Portuguese), and there are indeed myriad bar options. But don’t imagine an American-style scene with patrons sidling up to the counter to order a drink. Brazilian bars are places to sit around a table with friends, chattering the night away. For endless choices of artisanal cachaça, the Brazilian sugar cane liquor, head for Bar do Antônio (Pé de Cana), or for a hipper, buzzier, cheerier scene, Mercearia 130. Inventive bar food is also a given; in part thanks to the wildly popular monthlong bar food competition Comida di Buteco that has upped the ante.

1 pm
Museum Central
In 2010, the Minas Gerais state government decamped from the ornate turn-of-the-last-century buildings around a leafy, fountain-studded square downtown to a modern Niemeyer-designed complex on the city outskirts. The mansions and some surrounding buildings were soon transformed into modern museums and institutions known collectively as the Circuito Cultural Praça da Liberdade, or Liberty Square Cultural Circuit. It’s a museum district unlike any other in Brazil, its most notable component being the Memorial Minas Gerais Vale, a high-tech museum in the old Treasury Department where three floors—connected by a regal, red-carpeted staircase—are devoted to the literature, art and history of Minas Gerais. The Museu das Minas e do Metal in the old Education Department is an entertaining, bilingual, high-tech tribute to the state’s centuries-old economic base (and source of its name), and the Centro de Arte Popular Mineira (in a former pediatric hospital off the square) devotes four charming floors to everything from embroidery to artful kitchen utensils.

4 pm
Cachaça and Cheese
Ask Brazilians what products they associate with Minas Gerais, and they’ll probably mention cheese, sweets and cachaça. The overabundance of those and other traditional products and souvenirs in Belo Horizonte’s Central Market should impress even the most jaded marketgoers. Free tastings are a given. Doce de leite (the Brazilian name for dulce de leche) is served in endless varieties in jars or by the kilo; the state’s wide range of cachaça brands can be found here; and then there’s cheese, cheese, cheese. Seek out the stall labeled Laticinios Tupiguá for a taste of the red-pepper-flake-covered queijo da canastra, a cheese that was, for a long time, largely forbidden from crossing state lines because of Brazilian agricultural guidelines. It looks like cheesecake, and is equally delicious in its savory, spicy way.

8 pm
Pressed Pork
Like their colleagues around the world, Brazilian chefs have been busy formulating contemporary takes on local dishes. Trindade is Belo Horizonte’s most notable entry in the “not your mother’s codfish” category. The restaurant is elegantly unpretentious, bare wooden tables and lighting a bit too bright to be called romantic. The menu ranges from Brazilian dishes of African origin, like moqueca, the coconut milk and seafood stew from Bahia state, to salt cod confit, inspired by the favorite fish of its Portuguese colonizers. Then there are favorite Minas Gerais ingredients served in recognizably foreign form, like the porco prensado, pork belly given the Gordon Ramsay treatment, pressed and slow cooked. Dinner for two without drinks is about 160 reais.

11 pm
Via Berlin and Budapest
Berlin and Budapest have taught the world that there’s no better place for a party than a decrepit old building; that’s the idea behind the Mercado das Borboletas, or Butterfly Market, the name for the parties held in a complex of publishing and other businesses that has seen better days. In an upper level fallen into near complete decay, graffiti-covered walls and uneven concrete floors serve as a dance hall, with music varying nightly, from Brazilian funk to electronic. Some market stalls serve as bars; you might even find a VW bus-turned-hot-dog-stand.

Sunday
8 am
Art and Palms
Rent a car the day before so you can make the hour-plus drive on the BR-381 interstate and arrive at the artistic-botanic fantasyland known as the Inhotim by the time it opens at 9:30. On the way, shed all notions of what an art museum should be—unless your notions include a 275-acre adult playground with installations that range from the simply provocative to those that will have you dancing, napping and even taking a dip. (There are two works of swimmable art.) Add an igloo with strobe lights, an upside-down sailboat, and works by Brazilian and international artists like Hélio Oiticica and Matthew Barney, set amid 1,000 species of palm.

2 pm
Country Buffet
Enough of that modern take on country cuisine; it’s time for the country cuisine itself. Countryside restaurants with pots bubbling on a wooden stove are a staple of the Minas Gerais experience, as are homemade sweets. Take the high, slow way back; leaving Inhotim via the road to Alberto Flores and looking for signs to Córrego do Feijão, a tiny community with a restaurant called Casa Velha. There, the husband-wife team of Fernando Ribeiro (your gracious host) and Suely Ribeiro (the skilled chef) have created a traditional self-serve Minas feast. Try front pork shoulder, country-style chicken, farofa (toasted manioc flour) with kale stalks, pork crackling that really crackles and, of course, beans and rice and other Brazilian fixings. Sit inside or take your plate to the narrow split-log picnic tables in the back. The service is as traditional as the vintage coffee cups. The buffet costs 41 reais.

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36 Hours in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Belo Horizonte, the lively industrial capital of Brazil’s second most populous state, Minas Gerais, has always attracted hordes of visitors—the kind who carry briefcases and laptops, that is. But more...